It's Sweet, the Taste, This Bit of Love
by Citiesofcolor
Summary: She is in the stream when D'Anna is awoken, and Ellen feels the gasp of breath in her lungs and the pain in her skull, the price of eternal life, just as acutely as D'Anna does. Ellen knows they will come for her eventually. D'Anna always was such a stubborn child. Companion piece to The Hub and No Exit.


**Title:** It's Sweet, the Taste, This Bit of Love

**Rating:** K

**Word Count:** ~1,520

**Characters and Pairings:** Ellen, D'Anna, Cavil

**Summary:** She is in the stream when D'Anna is awoken and Ellen feels the gasp of breath in her lungs and the pain in her skull, the price of eternal life, just as acutely as D'Anna does. Ellen knows they will come for her eventually. D'Anna always was such a stubborn child.

**A/N:** So I ended up rewatching a large part of s4 and exhausted myself crying. The next morning I woke up and found the first draft of this up on my computer. I'd forgotten that in my emotional agony over cylons and mother-daughter emotions I'd feelsploded the night before and the result has been a fic. Thank you so much to **fragrantwoods** for the beta, and **simplyprologue**, **akissandacloak**, and **marzipanilla** for all their help and encouragement :D Title is taken from Bones & Skin by Mirah, which also partially inspired this fic.

.

* * *

_If I had children, I might name_

_them astrometeorological names..._

_They'd adore each other's heavenly bodies shining_

_upon their doubles on Earth._

-May Swenson,_ If I Had Children_

* * *

.

She has figured out she's on the resurrection hub. It's simple really, as simple as knowing the difference between the feel of engine vibrations in the floor.

Her days are the same. Always the same. Keeping herself occupied for interminable periods of time, feeling it slip by her. Meaningless now, time. Meaningless like sunlight and the Twelve Colonies and politics and day and night. These things don't matter anymore, didn't matter to begin with, never really applied to her at all. She is a cylon now, always was, and what is time to her? Ellen had always liked a clean aesthetic, and now she understands why.

She prays for Saul, thinks of Sam and Tory and Galen, wonders if they know yet. She swims in the datastream as far as the locks on the system will allow. John is smart, and has kept her from many things, but she is still one of the designers of this system and it remembers her touch. The hybrid knows her signature instinctively, and reaches out to her, takes Ellen to her side. Ellen is long unused to the immersion in the feed, and the hybrid understands, processes the waves of information swirling around them for her until she understands again. The current around them eddies and ripples, the baseship alive and beating in her bloodstream. She surfaces hours later, exhausted and full of mechanical peace, a serenity hard-won. This is how she spends her days.

The hybrid tells her through words whispered in binary of the rebellion of the raiders, the war between her children, of massacre and blood. She feels the pain as each hybrid fires on her sister, and then the whispers of Earth, barely more than irregularities in the flow until new information on the network from far away speaks of humans and something more substantial. _Alliance._

She is in the stream when D'Anna is awoken and Ellen feels the gasp of breath in her lungs and the pain in her skull, the price of eternal life, just as acutely as the body does. She knows they will come for her eventually. D'Anna always was such a stubborn child. Her _existing_ slowly solidifies into_ waiting_ as time regains meaning.

She's right, and they come. The centurions escort her, silent and perfunctory, and her heart bleeds for them. Yet another creature, perverted by her little boy. Does he understand now that he is no better than the humans he so hates?

Her D'Anna is righteous in her anger when Ellen is ushered through the panels, refusing to look anywhere but straight ahead. Her poor little girl, not even allowed to leave the pool. D'Anna is smart, programmed for insight and to see connections where others couldn't, and Ellen knows she understands the game John is playing, can see that all he wants is for her to side with him before he boxes her again.

She is a mother, and her daughter is hurting.

John is sneering and superior, profoundly misunderstanding D'Anna's anger for belligerence. Ellen knows better, knows her daughter like she knows herself. Sam had spent months programming emotional responses and psychological makeup, she'd seen the schematics, had helped with the coding of her spirituality and her defense mechanism subroutines. Ellen knows that D'Anna is afraid. John has tried to get rid of her, just like Daniel, like the Raiders, like the centurions, like the Natalies and Leobens and Sharons. He has not yet learned the value of empathy, and Ellen fears it might be too late to add just a little more code to his programming.

John kneels next to the tank, gestures at Ellen.

"Your final five are not the gods you believe them to be, sister," he says, mocking D'Anna just as much as he is mocking Ellen, and gestures towards her theatrically.

"She is no more or less than you."

The expression in D'Anna's eyes when she finally looks at her breaks Ellen's heart. She can hear the gloat in John's voice when he chuckles.

"I'm sure you two have a lot to talk about. Maybe you can explain to your creator what it feels like to know that you were made fundamentally flawed."

Neither of them turn their heads to watch him go. When the door panels close behind him, D'Anna sits up in the tank and makes a move to stand; Ellen knows what resurrection does to a body, knows D'Anna's legs will not be stable enough to support her yet. Galen had expressed worries about it during the design process, but they hadn't had enough time to rectify it. She quickly steps over.

"No dear, not yet. Not yet," she soothes, taking D'Anna's hand in her own and kneeling where John had been before. The amniotic fluid is drying on her skin, leaving a cool film, and Ellen gets the disconcerting sensation that she's touching plastic.

_Alive_, she tells herself, _D'Anna is as alive as I am_.

D'Anna's eyes are pleading. "I've kept your secret," she says, "I wondered why he didn't ask me about you."

Ellen caresses her hand, touches her shoulder gently. Her first daughter, always so attached to her mother, made to be a counterbalance to John in every way in hopes that it would widen both their perspectives and help him learn. A female to a male, a believer to a skeptic, but just as stubborn and firm in her mind as he was.

"He didn't need to." Ellen hums, leaning close and tilting her head. "He knew this whole time."

D'Anna looks away from Ellen, back at the far wall. "He thinks seeing you will make me question my faith," she says bitterly.

It's as if a hand has seized Ellen's heart, and it skips a beat. She raises D'Anna's chin to look her in the eyes. Blue, bright blue, the hue stretched to the limits of the naturally occurring color in humans. That had been one of Saul's contributions.

_"Blue like yours, Ellen."_

"Has it?" she questions.

D'Anna shakes her head, looking vulnerable and childlike. _Trusting, so trusting_. "It is not a flaw to question our purpose, is it?" D'Anna asks, an edge of worry in her voice. Relief floods through Ellen like a drug at her question.

"Never," she answers simply. "You were created to grow and evolve, to decide your own purposes. We gave you the tools. It was always up to you."

D'Anna curls closer to the side of the tank, as close to Ellen as she can get, and lays her head on the rim. "He's not going to let me live, is he?"

It's not a question, but Ellen hesitates anyway.

"He already plans to box you again. The hybrid protests it," she admits. Ellen thinks there might be tears in D'Anna's eyes, but she can't tell for sure. Either way, she reaches out, strokes her wet hair gently.

D'Anna reaches for her hand again, and they stay that way for what seems like a long time; D'Anna curled close, Ellen with one hand stroking her hair, the other gripping her tight. She hasn't done this for decades and decades, since the first Three was born, a prototype, with so much promise and hope. She wonders if this is what Demeter felt like, saying goodbye to Persephone.

Footsteps sound outside in the hallway.

"They're coming back," D'Anna says with a finality, resigned.

This time the tears are in Ellen's eyes, pricking and stinging. Her child. Her Three. Her D'Anna. Made with her own hands and given life. It hurts like a wound. No parent should outlive their child, and she has already lost her Daniel, is losing John, has lost D'Anna once before and will have to lose her again.

"I love you," she whispers, and kisses her daughter's forehead.

D'Anna curls her fingers more tightly around Ellen's hand, eyes beseeching.

"Don't forget me," she whispers. "I know the others will come for you. Don't leave me here when they come."

Her voice is stretched thin with desperation. D'Anna had already experienced a permanent death once before and was likely facing another. Her precious daughter, turned off like a light.

The footsteps are right outside the door now. Ellen squeezes her hand one last time, and cups her cheek.

"I won't," she says, heart heavy. "I promise. I promise I won't forget you."

D'Anna doesn't look away from her until John reaches them and takes a position at Ellen's side. She doesn't let go of D'Anna's hand until he prods her shoulder, threatens to have the centurions remove her if she won't leave on her own. _No_, she wants to say, _I won't leave her like this_, but it would be an empty gesture. Meaningless.

So, she leaves, but the sight-the red of the datastream, her daughter's hand, her profile lit from underneath by the resurrection tank, the anger in her eyes-does not.


End file.
